


Back in time (Steve Rogers x Reader)

by savrom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, New York, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 09:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11461080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savrom/pseuds/savrom
Summary: You're the new member of the Avengers and even though you haven't even properly met everyone, you are already tasked with the most important mission ever: saving all of their lives.





	1. The mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Hydra has dropped a bomb on the Avengers Tower and only Tony, Fury, Steve and you have survived, Tony wants to send you back in time to stop everything from happening. Your mission: Get the secret files, destroy them, come back. Oh, and don't get caught...

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. You felt blood dripping from a cut on your lip and your whole body felt sore. _What had just happened?_

     You pushed yourself from the floor looking around you. Your room in Stark Tower was completely destroyed, a cloud of ashes rained down on you. You had only been here a week – since Fury had asked you to join the Avengers in the hunt for the remaining HYDRA agents – and now everything was gone.

     You tried to stand up, but your legs were stuck under a part of the ceiling that had come down. You looked up, seeing a large hole, leading up to the blue sky. Through the smoke, it was hard to see anything, but you were almost certain you could see helicopters flying away.

     You coughed up blood, trying to wriggle yourself from underneath the heavy concrete.

     “Damn it!” you cried out, still not able to move.

     You wondered what had happened to the other parts of the tower and you could only imagine what had happened to the Avengers. You weren’t even really part of the team yet and everything was already falling apart. You still couldn’t figure out what exactly it was that had happened.

     You remembered sitting on the couch in your bedroom watching the late night news. You remembered hearing some noises outside, but you didn’t make much of it. You were born and raised in New York. You were used to all the noises. It probably was just a car crash or a drugs deal gone bad. Those sort of things happened all the time. It was nothing.

     But it hadn’t been nothing. It hadn’t been nothing at all. Stark Tower had been attacked and the Avengers… You could only hope you weren’t the only survivor.

     Tears streamed down your face as you screamed desperately in an attempt to pull your legs away. Somewhere far away you thought you heard a voice calling your name, but you could almost hear nothing. Your hair stuck to your face with the blood that had come from your ears. The large explosion had probably perforated your eardrums.

     ”[Name]!” you heard again, clearer this time.”[Name], are you alright?”

     You turned your head, seeing Steve standing in what was left of the door opening leading to your room. He held his hand in front of one of his eyes, blood dripping from his fingers. His other arm hung loosely next to his body as if it had been dislocated from the shoulder.

     Steve rushed over to you, kneeling beside you. “What happened?” he asked you, scanning you with his good eye to see if you were alright. 

     “Someone dropped a bomb on the tower!” you screamed, but you still didn’t hear yourself. “The ceiling,” you pointed at the large piece of concrete on your legs, “it came down.”

     Steve nodded, lowering his hand from his eye, revealing a large cut running from his forehead, through his eye all the way to his nose. Blood was still dripping out of it and you swallowed hard looking at his face. 

     “I’m sorry,” you mumbled, looking at him. 

     “Don’t worry about it. I hope I have enough strength to pull you from underneath. Can you still feel your legs?”

     You nodded, after which Steve placed his good hand underneath your arm pit and pulled you from underneath the piece of ceiling, all the while screaming in your ear. You didn’t mind. You couldn’t hear half of it anyway. 

     When you were finally free, you picked yourself off the floor. You wobbled on your feet for the first couple of seconds, but soon you had found your balance again. Your muscles ached and there was a large cut on your right thigh, but other than that, you were good to go. 

     You helped Steve put his shoulder back into its socket and made an improvised eye-patch, by ripping off a piece of his sleeve and tying it around his head. 

     “We need to search for the others. The tower can collapse any minute, but I don’t want to walk out of here without at least trying to save them.”

     Steve agreed right away. Your rooms had been closest to each other and on the top floor. The bomb would have hit you first. You figured the others would be just fine. That was if it had only been one bomb…

     You quickly made your way down, dropping yourself through the hole in your room, that led you to the hallway underneath. The whole floor was covered in dust and you could barely see a thing. Jolting electricity wires were hanging from the ceiling, which itself was cracked all the way through. You could almost hear the wind coming through the cracks. It wouldn’t hold much longer.

     This floor was Tony and Pepper’s private floor. You had never been here before, but it seemed Steve had, as he pulled you along with him, walking somewhere you could only guess. 

     A part of the upper floor had crashed through the ceiling, taking down half of this floor as well. You could only make it to the bedroom. The whole living room was gone, plunged into the streets of New York.

     The bedroom door was still closed, but you could see rays of sunshine coming from underneath. You could only hope Tony had opened the blinds…

     As you stepped in, you gasped, feeling a shot of pain going through your heart. Steve swallowed hard as you both looked at Tony’s bedroom. The whole outer wall was destroyed, the bed only holding on to the floor by a few inches. Tony was kneeling on the floor, holding Pepper’s lifeless body in his hands. A large wound on her forehead explained to you what had happened. He cradled her in his arms, holding her tightly against his chest.

     You bit your lip trying not to cry, but the sight of Tony, holding the one person that was dearest to him, send shivers down your spine. You could only imagine how he felt.

     “Tony,” Steve whispered, walking towards him and laying a hand on his shoulder. “We need to go.”

     “No,” he shook his head, probably still in shock. “I’m not leaving Pepper. I need to get her to a hospital. I need to–”

     “Tony…” Steve swallowed hard. “Pepper is gone. We need to leave, now.”

     Tony looked up to Steve, tears in his eyes. “No, I can save her…”

     “Tony…” Steve started.

     “We need to find Fury,” Tony said resolutely, pushing himself from the floor, carefully letting go of Pepper. He stroked the hair out of her face and kissed her forehead. “I will come back for you, I promise.”

     “We don’t know if anyone else survived,” you said, watching Tony walk out of the room, followed by Steve. “He could be dead for all we know.”

     “We need to find him. Alive  _or_  dead,” Tony replied, pushing you out of the way. “I know who did this.”

     “What?” Steve cried out, running after Tony as he made his way to the large hole in the floor. “What do you mean?”

     “There is no time to explain. J.A.R.V.I.S. are you there? J.A.R.V.I.S?” Tony lowered himself down to the next floor, not even waiting for you to follow him.

     “Yes, sir?”

     “The lower levels of the tower, are they still intact?”

     “Yes, sir. The electricity had been cut off, but the backup generator is still functional. The south stairwell is also almost completely intact.”

     “Great,” Tony mumbled to himself, as Steve helped you get down from the hole Tony had just carelessly lowered himself through. “What about casualties. Who are still alive? Can you perform a life function scan?”

     “Right away, sir.”

     Steve and you ran after Tony, while he quickly made his way to the south stairwell. 

     “Are you going to tell us what is going on? You are acting like it doesn’t matter that the rest might be dead,” Steve said angrily. 

     “Because it doesn’t!” Tony cried out, turning to Steve. “All of this,” Tony put his hands in the air and pointing at everything. “It wouldn’t have even happened if you had done what you were suppose to do 75 years ago!”

     “What is that supposed to mean…”

     “Wake up, Cap. This was HYDRA.” Tony resumed his path to the south stairwell again, pulling the door to the stairs open and slamming it against the wall. 

     Steve turned to you, looking confused. “But we have taken down most of HYDRA… How could they have had such a large bomb without us knowing about it.”

     “I don’t know,” you sighed, being as confused as he was. You laid your hand on his shoulder and nudged him to follow the billionaire further down the tower, ”but we can’t leave Tony here like that. And the others…”

     “Sir, the results of the scan are in. I can only detect one other person with a pulse. Mister Fury is two floor down, leaning against his bedroom door. He is fatally wounded. I estimate that he only has three hours to live.”

     “Thank you, J.A.R.V.I.S.”

     You felt tears welling up in your eyes as you realized that Natasha and Clint were both dead. Your heart was racing in your chest as you followed Tony and Steve down two floors.

     It was relatively easy to get to Fury’s room. A few pieces of concrete were blocking the way, but Steve was able to get them out of the way very easily. Fury actually smiled, seeing the three of you.

     ”I never thought I’d say this,” he panted, “but am I glad to see you…”

     “There is no time, Nick,” Tony spoke. “The rest is dead. We need to start up the machine.”

     “They used it?” Fury sighed, rubbing his eyes. “But I thought you said the machine wasn’t ready?”

     “We have no other choice.”

     “Wait a minute,” you interrupted them. “What the hell is going on here? Who used what? And what machine?”

     Steve nodded, backing you. “I think we have the right to know what’s going on.”

     “Pull me up, will you, Cap?” Fury told Steve. “We need to get to the basement first. Then we need to decide who of us is going in…”

     Steve pulled Fury off the floor and helped him get to the stairwell. He continued talking while you were walking down to the basement.

     “We uncovered some old HYDRA files, dating back to the 1940’s. They talk about some sort of weapon of mass destruction.”

     “The Tesseract you mean,” Steve cut in. “But what does that have to do with what happened here. The Tesseract is in Asgard. Besides, Schmidt couldn’t control the power without Zola. So, with Zola gone, HYDRA could never harness its powers.”

     “The Tesseract is in Asgard, yes,” Fury continued, “but as much as Schmidt was a psychopath, he was not a fool. The Tesseract isn’t the only artifact that holds so much power. Loki’s scepter for one contains much of the same energy and power. We could never find out how much power it had, but Tony and Bruce figured that HYDRA did find out. The weapon of mass destruction that was in those files, was just a vessel for such an artifact. In fact created by your friend, Doctor Erskine,” Fury said, turning to Steve. “We have been trying for months to find a way to stop them from using the weapon, but as you can see, we weren’t very successful. That is why Tony and Bruce started working on something revolutionary. Something that is only theoretically possible and we couldn’t even hope to apprehend.”

     You had reached the bottom floor and Tony led you into the basement, where his and Bruce’s workplace was located. The lights flickered on, revealing the chaos that had also erupted here. Most of the equipment was broken and files and folders were laying everywhere. The only thing that didn’t seem broken was a strange looking cell standing at the back of the basement.

     “One of us needs to go back in time, find those files and destroy them before anyone can ever lay eyes on them again.”

     A laugh welled from your throat as you looked at Tony, who seemed to be very serious. “Back in time? Are you talking about time travel? Are you insane? That’s impossible. Even in theory.”

     Steve stood beside you, letting his good eye shift over Tony and Fury. “They’re serious, [Name]…”

     You had stopped laughing, looking at the key Fury pulled from his neck and handed to Tony.

     “We’re very serious. We have succeeded in transporting items into the future. Books, pens, apples, even rats. We haven’t tried the past, but we… I mean, _I_ assume that would be the same.”

     “One problem, how are we supposed to get back?”

     “That’s where the key is for. It activates the machine and by pressing this button,” Tony showed you the little button on the key. “You should be able to come back.”

     “You… wait, you mean _me_?” you mumbled, looking at Tony. 

     “Fury is not going to make it long enough to perform the task. I need to operate the machine, and Steve can’t go. He’s already there.”

     “What do you mean ‘already there’?”

     Steve sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “He means to send you back into the 1940’s.”

     “1944 to be exact…”

     Your heart started to race and you had trouble breathing. “No… I–I can’t...”

     “You have to,” Fury said. “We’re all dead if you don’t.”

     “But what am I supposed to do!”

     “Get the file, destroy it, come back. Oh, and don’t get caught,” Tony said.

     Tony walked over to the weird looking cell at the end of the room, putting the key into it and turning it around. The machine started making weird noises and a light flickered on inside. Tony pulled the key back out and handed it to you.

     “You are our only hope, [Name],” Tony swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t ask this of you if there was another way. I’m asking you to trust me.”

     You nodded slowly, taking the key from his hands. You weren’t even part of the team yet and you were already handed the most important mission there was.

     Saving everyone’s life.

     You looked up from the key and turned your head to Steve. He was standing over Fury, who had collapsed on the floor. Maybe Tony was right. If you didn’t try, you would be dead for sure. Maybe it was worth a shot.

     You swallowed hard. “What do I do if they catch me?”

     “Just work your charms,” Tony tried to reassure you. “Once the files are destroyed it doesn’t matter.”

     “I don’t have any charms...”

     Tony sighed. “Well, that way they’ll at least know you’re not a spy.”

     “Okay,” you whispered. “I’ll do it.”

     You walked towards the cell and opened the heavy door. Inside, it smelt like metal. You had to suppress the overwhelming feeling to vomit. You quickly composed yourself and turned around, watching Steve close the door behind you. You could hear the squeaking of the metal wheel turning the door shut.

     “Steve…” you mumbled from inside the machine. “If I don’t come back, can you tell my mother I love her?’

     Steve swallowed hard, laying his hand against the glass. “You’re going to be fine, [Name]. I know I don’t exactly know you that well, but I have faith in you. We all have.”

     “Ready?” Tony asked you, looking at you one last time. “The machine will take you to the date, time and place Bruce and I thought the file would most likely be.”

     You nodded. “Ready.”

     Right when Tony pressed the button, for you to be sent back in time, the ceiling came crashing down. You could see the fear in their eyes and the determinate look on Tony’s face as he held onto the button. After that, there was nothing left but a cloud of darkness. 

     You felt like the air was slammed out of your lungs as you imagined what had happened to Tony, Fury, and Steve. Tears were streaming down your face as you were slamming your hands against the glass of the cell. You were screaming as loud as you could, but no one could hear. No one was left.

     They were all gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More will come soon!


	2. The Hydra base

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Tony's time machine has transported you to the past and you messed up the most important part of your mission, a difficult task awaits you: gaining the other Steve's trust.

“No!” you screamed, your throat sore from crying. No…”  
     You slammed your hands against the cell again, but you didn’t know why anymore. It was no use. They were gone. The machine hadn’t worked and you were trapped. They were all dead and you were soon going to be.

     You hit the glass of the door one last time, in an attempt to forget about the pain that was burning inside of your chest. You hadn’t known the Avengers a long time, but they had felt like long lost friends. They had felt like home.  
     Just as your hand hit the glass, the cell disappeared and you plunged forward, falling onto a cold, hard floor. For a few seconds, you just stared at your hands on that floor, feeling the coldness spread through your fingers. When you looked up, you realized you were in some kind of file room. Cabinets were standing in rows behind each other and on a table, a map of the world was laid out.   
     You slowly pushed yourself from the floor, wiping the tears from your face as you did so. Had Tony’s machine worked? Were you really in the past? You opened one of the cabinets, revealing old looking files with the HYDRA stamp on it. You almost broke down in tears again as you realized the machine had worked. You were really in 1944.  
     Not wanting to waste any time – who knew what happened if you stayed too long – you quickly pulled all the files out of the cabinet, going over them fast to see if they were the right files. You didn’t exactly know what you were looking for, but you figured you would know when you found it.  
     The first cabinet didn’t contain the file you were looking for and you immediately moved on to the next. There were at least a dozen more cabinets, not even counting the stacks of files that were just standing around. You had to go through every single one of them. Why were things never easy?  
     When you had gone through more than half of the cabinets and stacks, you started to get worried. What if the file wasn’t here – wherever here might be – what were you to do? You couldn’t go back, but you couldn’t go out if this room either. You didn’t understand how the whole time traveling thing worked, but you could imagine what would happen if you did something that changed the whole course of history. That would maybe even be worse than not finding that file.  
     Somewhere in the distance, you thought you heard gunfire, but you still hadn’t gotten your complete hearing back, so you ignored it. It probably was just an echo from the things you had heard earlier. Besides that, you were so focused on going through every file, that you didn’t pay much attention to what might be happening around you. In your training as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, you had learned otherwise – paying attention to every detail was of the utmost importance – but somewhere between your friends getting killed and you getting transported into the past, you had forgotten about all you had learned over the past few years.  
     You were almost at the end of the room when you reached a cabinet that was locked. You frowned, looking at the old lock. Why would they need to lock a cabinet that was already stored away in another room?  
     You took out one of the pins in your hair and started to pick the lock. You were used to more advanced locks, so the old, rusty one broke open easily, giving you access to the file you had been looking for. You took it out of the drawer, seeing Doctor Erskine’s name standing on the front page. You quickly peeked inside, seeing the blueprint of a large, modern looking weapon. The description was very detailed and your heart started to race. You had found it. You had actually found it.  
     Right before you wanted to tuck it away in your jacket and you wanted to press the button on the key hanging around your neck, the door leading to the file room was broken open. Two men with large guns stepped inside and pointed they weapons at our head.  
     “Hands in the air!” the one with the short brown hair and blue suit screamed at you, his eyes spitting fire. “Drop the folder, or I’ll shoot you.”  
     You looked at the man, swallowing hard. You couldn’t let go of the file. Not before you had destroyed it. Otherwise, everything would have been for nothing and HYDRA would still win. You couldn’t let that happen.  
     “Captain, we’ve got another one,” the second man, with a barret and mustache, cried out to someone that was standing outside the room. “It’s a woman…”  
_Captain?_  you thought, pressing the file even tighter against your body. That couldn’t possibly be Steve, could it?  
     “We found her hiding in the storage room. She seems harmless, but one can never tell with those HYDRA agents,” the man spoke again.  
     “What about the Red Skull, any sign of him?” his voice was calm but firm. As if he had done this a thousand times and knew exactly what to do. Your heart started to race in your chest. You would have recognized his voice anywhere.  
     “Steve…” you whispered, looking into his deep blue eyes as he appeared in the door opening. You had to suppress the urge to run over to him and throw yourself into his arms. This wasn’t the Steve you knew. This was the old Steve.

     Your Steve was dead.  
     “No, Captain,” the first man spoke, more composed than before. “She’s the last one. The rest is dead.”  
     “Red Skull…” you whispered, remembering the mission reports you had read about Steve’s encounters with HYDRA. “Wait, you think I’m HYDRA?” you spoke up, watching Steve walk into the room and observe you from head to toe.  
     “You sound American,” the man with the mustache frowned, lowering his weapon.

     “Of course I do. I _am_ American. Why would I not be?”  
     “We’re in a HYDRA base in Germany,” Steve spoke calmly. “We just assumed you were German. Now that you’re not, that leaves the question: Who are you? Who do you work for?”

     “Of course,” you mumbled to yourself, smiling and shaking your head, thinking that Tony and Bruce were truly geniuses. They didn’t only manage to transport you through time. They also managed to transport you across the world.  
     “I asked you a question…” Steve spoke again, looking at you angrily.

     “My name is [Name] [Last Name]. I’m a S.H….” you paused. You couldn’t tell them you were a S.H.I.E.LD. agent. Partly because you weren’t anymore – S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone. It didn’t exist anymore – but more importantly because it didn’t exist _yet_ … “I’m an agent,” you quickly corrected yourself.  
     “With which organization?”  
     “I can’t tell you.”  
     “Why not?”   
     “It’s classified…”  
     Steve snorted. “The way I see it, you don’t really have many options here, Miss [Last Name]. Either you tell us who you are, or we shoot you.”  
     Your heart started to race again. They couldn’t shoot you. Dead in this time, meant dead in your own time. And you still hadn’t destroyed the file yet. “Is that the way you treat a lady, Captain? I’m disappointed…”  you said cheekily, hoping Tony’s advice to use your charms – even though you thought you didn’t have any – would help you get out of this mess.  
     Steve seemed flustered for a second, looking at you with a confused look in his eyes. He, however, quickly composed himself and looked at you angrily. “I don’t have time for games, Miss [Last Name]. You’ll have to come with us. Take the files, Bucky. It seems to be important to her,” Steve said looking from you to the man with the short brown hair. “James, tell the others to place the explosives. We’re leaving.”  
  
     “No!” you cried out, as Bucky took a step closer to you, reaching for the file in your hand. “I’ll come, but you have to let me destroy these files. It’s very important. You have to trust me.”  
     Steve looked deep into your eyes, while Bucky waited for him to give the orders. “You haven’t exactly given me any reason to. Take it.”  
     You let Bucky take the file from your hands reluctantly, keeping a good eye on where he put it. You couldn’t lose it out of sight. You cursed yourself for getting caught. That was the only thing you weren’t supposed to do. You just had to go back in time, find the file, destroy it and come back.  _Don’t_  get caught. Why did Tony send you to the exact time when Steve was also here, taking down the base?  
     Bucky took you by the arm and led you outside the room. You looked at him from the corner of your eyes, realizing this was the same Bucky that _your_ Steve had once called his friend, but had become the Winter Soldier. It was hard to picture them as the same man.  
     “Don’t lose her out of your sight,” Steve told Bucky, as they made their way back to the entrance of the large warehouse you were in. “I’ve got a feeling not all the HYDRA agents are dead.”  
     “What do I do when she escapes?”  
     Steve turned his head around to you, swallowing hard. “Shoot her.”  
     Bucky nodded, pushing you out in front of him, pointing the barrow of his gun at the back of your head. If he disagreed with Steve’s order, he didn’t say anything about it. “You heard him. Move it!”  
     You started walking, staring at the two guns on Steve’s back. You could try to reach for them, but before you could even click the safety pins off, Bucky would have already put a bullet in the back of your head.

     _No_ , that wasn’t an option. You needed to play along and hope Steve could be reasoned with. You had to destroy that file. No matter the cost.  
     Bucky was still moving forward when your eye caught the glimmer of a barrow of a gun. From the corner of you eyes, you could see at least two HYDRA agents following you on the platform above you. One of them pointed his weapon in Steve’s direction and lay his finger on the trigger. Your heart beat uncontrollably in your chest. You couldn’t let Steve die. It didn't matter how much of a pain in the ass he was to you. America needed him.  
     You ran closer to Steve, pulled the two guns from his back, and before Bucky had any time to react, you shot the two HYDRA agents down, causing one of them to fall over the railing of the platform. He screamed all the way to the floor. With a thud, his body lay motionless on the hard concrete a few feet away from you. Before you could fire a second time, to also kill the other agent, a bullet nested in your shoulder. The agent had been faster than you and had shot you down.   
     You grabbed your arm, feeling the burning pain spread through your shoulder. “Son of a…” you mumbled, biting down a curse as Steve and Bucky both fired at the agent, killing him instantly.  
     “Damn it, Bucky,” Steve cried out. “I thought I told you to keep an eye on her.”

     “I did!” Bucky screamed back. “But she was too fast. Besides, I–I think she just saved your life…”  
     Steve turned to you, looking you up and down, seeing the blood that was dripping down your arm. “You promise not to shoot us if I let you keep those guns?”

     You nodded, not so sure if you would be any good now that there was a hole in your shoulder, but you appreciated the trust. You cleared your throat. “Yes.”  
     “Let’s get moving then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 :) I hope you like it and chapter 3 will come soon!


End file.
